I heard your voice through a photograph. I thought it up and brought up the past (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

WNP x 2 with my younger brother on the steps of Rochdene.

Wie geht's?

For some reason, I've been thinking about my relationship to my great grand-father lately.

We share the same initials - WNP, and I feel a strong bond to him. I even wear his marriage band. I'd wear one worn by my father, but I don't recall him ever wearing a wedding ring.

William Purdy was a kind of shadowy figure from my childhood. We visited Rochdene (his house in Reimers Avenue, Mt Albert) every Saturday after football because Grandma and Deedoo also lived there.

That photo above is a perfect representation of our relationship. Bemused great grandchildren and distinguished elderly gentleman (he was in his early eighties at that point) standing a bit behind them. Looks like he was off to bowls and dad had managed to get a quick photo. 

There are plenty of things I don't know about the other WNP. 

What was his early life like before coming to New Zealand?What was his relationship like to my dad? What was his relationship like with his sons Eddie and Harry (my grandfather)? What did he think of my grandmother? What was he called by my dad? Were they close? Why did he allow Grandma and Deedoo to move into his house? That's a few.

At the Rochdene archway.
The dog was long gone by the time
we came along.

I do know a few things but I can only guess at the answers to those questions above. Maybe a family member from Uncle Eddie's side of the family can help me out?

William was born July 17, 1880 in Rochdale.

He married Emma in Rochdale and they had three sons (one of whom died in infancy). Out of somewhere they made a crucial decision when my grandfather was very young (8 or 9) to move to New Zealand from Rochdale in the early 1900s. Basically -the farthest point away from Rochdale. The other end of the earth. Not like moving to Scunthorpe or something. To my knowledge, he never returned to England. He was in his early twenties. Extraordinary.

During the long passage to NZ via Australia, or else when they reached Australia, something happened to cause him to leave Emma, my great grandmother, in Sydney and come to NZ with his two very young sons. No one knows what really happened. 

He later remarried but there were no further children. Florence was not around by the time we came along.

Like his own father (James Purdy) back in Rochdale, William was a skilled builder/ painter/ wall-paperer/ plasterer and he eventually started a business in Auckland - Purdy and Sons Plasterers. The business ended when my grandad (Deedoo) retired.

In Rochdale

My memories of my great grandfather are exclusively of him in his house in Reimers Ave, Mt Eden, Auckland until his death in the mid 1960s when I was 9 and Ross was 7. I don't have any memories of him coming to our house in Royal Oak or of his meeting us anywhere.  
 

While visiting Rochdene on Saturday mornings we never really encountered William that I can recall. He had a room at the front of the house (remember, it was his house) and he must have stayed in there, or else he was out but he was pretty old by this time so I doubt that - did he even have a car? Not sure, but we didn't come across him at all and we never went into his room. Never ever. Not once.

So, as I said above, he was always a shadowy figure, just on the edge of my childhood consciousness. I certainly knew he was there, but we kept out of his way (or he kept out of ours, not sure which).

WNP with grandma and Deedoo

Our dad we called 'dad', our grandfather we called Deedoo (my pet name for him that stuck), but our great grandfather had no pet name. We obviously didn't call him William or great grandfather; so we didn't call him anything that I can remember. As I say, he was a shadowy presence.

No surprise then, that I didn't ever get close to forming a relationship with him. Looking at other photos of him, it is obvious that he did get out - bowls for instance and he was by all accounts a pretty social guy and my dad (and mum) got on well with him. There was never ever any tension associated with our visits, so it's all a bit strange really.

Four generations 

Given the age range of the four generations, it's pretty remarkable that he was even part of my consciousness. BTW I love how I'm fully present on that bottom step with my crooked fringe (thanks mum).

WNP is a guy I never really knew. But...I feel a real bond to him. Apart from sharing the same initials (was that deliberate by my parents?), we look similar (strong Purdy genes and that old Apples thing again) and we share overlapping history.

And I love him dearly for his legacy. Symbolically, as mentioned above, I wear his gold wedding band on my right-hand ring finger. It's no nonsense - plain and beautiful, and comes from a solid north of England, Rochdale origin. It permanently connects me to my ancestral roots. It makes me feel that a little bit of Rochdale is always with me.

That's important to me because Rochdale feels like home in ways that I can't articulate. I had a very very strong sense of belonging when I visited for the first time in 2003.

Along with my other family members, he looks down on me and is with me during the daily grind. He put in a shift, and I aim to make him proud.

Love and peace - WNP

"Come in", she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm" (Bob Dylan)

My grandfather (left), and my great grandfather (front).

Wie geht's?

Recently, I posted on social media the fact that the Saturday night of 26th February, 1983, in New Plymouth, was a big deal in my life, in that I met Jacky Smith at a fancy dress party. If you need the origin story again - here it is.

On my post I said, "It only changed everything". And it did. Young Asher is the latest present tense product of that late February, early eighties, meeting.

As for the past, that idea stretches back through the ages as my ancestors went about their lives and somehow, eventually, I happened along.

As Bill Bryson writes:

Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you.

Funny old life innit.

Love and peace - WNP

Always, no sometimes, think it's me (John Lennon)

Get Back (You may say I'm a dreamer - Chapter 1, part 9)

October the first, 1962, was huge! 

The Beatles signed a contract with Brian Epstein on that day in England and I started my education at Royal Oak Primary after a stint at Mrs Rogers Greenwoods Corner kindy. The year was also memorable in other ways - down in Dunedin, a few months earlier on April 14th Jacqueline Frances Smith was the first child born to Patricia and Brian Smith.

Like millions of people I can identify with John Lennon's lyric to Strawberry Fields Forever when he says, 'No one I think is in my tree'. From the start I knew I was different. I loved words and reading right from the start. Probably totally pretentious, but I'd love to try out new vocabulary on my parents, and peers at school. I was experimenting and I read A LOT!

Nose in a book - typical!

Grandma bought me Look and Learn magazines each week, I loved the reading boxes at school, I borrowed books from the library and I would have books bought for me to read. And there were always the adult books in the bookcase at home that I'd gaze at when bored. 

My imagination was stirred AND shaken. Look and Learn had some great comic strips, The Trigan Empire series and others. There were informative articles and my books were adventure oriented but not of the usual Enid Blyton kind.

The year 1962 was also tinged with sadness for my father and grandfather. William, my great grandfather, our solid link to Rochdale origins, passed away.

WNP, WNP and RGP

I can't say I ever really knew him, I was 5, but I definitely remember him. He was a kind of shadowy figure but he was a definite presence. The house called Roch-dene in Reimers Avenue, opposite Eden Park, belonged to him, not Deedoo as I always believed. My father and his parents lived with William rather than the other way around.

I feel a real connection to him, I share his initials, I proudly wear his gold wedding band and his roots in Rochdale feel deeply ingrained in me as well. Without William I wouldn't be here, so I owe him a great debt.

On the first day of school I arrived with my mum and immediately found a friend, or more accurately, he found me. I seem to have a knack for making strong relationships with people and Billy was the first. My first day of Primary and this little boy befriends me, a total stranger one second then we're mates! Just like that. Billy's open invitation to be a friend has stayed with me, long after the event.

Wherever you are, Billy, you did good to a funny little guy.

Royal Oak primary was a magic school and a wonderful start. I can still picture teachers and students and even individual lessons like they were part of my recent past: plays I performed in; getting cards from reading boxes; playing goalie and diving around like a maniac; being catcher for the softball team; playing four square; getting a kiss from Adrienne - my first love; drinking warm milk from cream sized glass bottles; being on school patrol at the Pah Road crossing; doing a speech about a family holiday to Australia; singing in Mrs Alexander's choir; protecting Ross from bullies; getting on the bus to the murder house (dentist traumas that linger still) and playing rugby at Te Papa Primary.

These things are all as vivid in my memory as if I'd read about them in a book. Yes - Royal Oak primary was magic, as was my childhood in the otherwise turbulent sixties.

Love and peace - Wozza

Get back Jo Jo, go home (Paul McCartney)

Get Back (You may say I'm a dreamer Chapter 1, part 3)

Harry (Deedoo), William, Edward (Uncle Eddie), Emma Purdy

Turned out, William Purdy was quite different to his father in his outlook. Not only did he marry twice (to Emma Mechan, then Florence Worthington), not only did he only have two children (a third, named James, died in infancy), but, courageously, he decided to leave Rochdale behind and embark on a new life for his family on the other side of the world, in New Zealand.

I am still largely in the dark about his motives. Life in Rochdale was grim and cousin Christine's mum, Irene Purdy, has told me how the family were suffering. Vague stories of Emma's behaviour, the death of their third child and lack of work seems to have contributed to his decision. But New Zealand? With two very young sons?

And then there's the enigma called Emma. Mystery still surrounds her and the relationship with William.

Presumably, the family left England together but something happened along the sea voyage to cause Emma to stay in Australia while William and her two young sons (Harry was 8 years old) continued on to Auckland, New Zealand.

Strangely, Harry's younger brother, Eddie, did not even know of Emma's existence until he was forty years old!!

It's clear that Emma still had affection for her sons - while in Australia, she sent Harry an exorbitant sum of money to buy a top of the line radio. My parents even visited her in Sydney when they were newly married and on their honeymoon (Auckland to Sydney to Norfolk Island). I'd hear stories of how miserly she was living as I grew up but I never met her. When she died her property was left to her sons.

Apart from that, little is known about her and nothing survives about her strained relationship with William.

Emma and my grandfather, Harry Purdy

The only photographs I have of her are on this blogpost. They show an intense young woman proudly holding her sons Harry (my grandfather who I named Deedoo when I was a toddler) and baby Edward. Taken in Rochdale, Harry would have been about 12 months old in one and about four in the other - all looks normal - a typical young family, with no hint of what was to come.

What I am left with is a load of questions that even my dad couldn't answer when I asked him in the 1990's: Why New Zealand? Why was she left in Sydney? What happened to James? Did she shame the family in some way (was she a thief?)? Why didn't Eddie know about her? And on it goes.

I guess this is the same for most families and why the BBC does those programmes exploring the roots of UK celebrities.

Secrets. They are extremely frustrating and leave me with an empty pit of the stomach feeling.

If little is known of Emma, the same is true of Florence. I have discovered a few photos that show that she and William looked happy enough but I can only imagine what the young Purdy's home life was like.

Eventually they grew up and were trained in the family art of plastering and joined William in the business.

Deedoo and Graham - my dad

Harry/Deedoo was a carefree, hard grafting man of considerable skill when it came to his trade. He seemed an unlikely match for Christina Amelia Curson, apparently a lady of a different social standing. Somehow they met, fell in love (I'm guessing - I never saw any overt signs of affection), and married. I have no idea about the details - I never thought to ask. I can't see my grandmother as anything other than Grandma (old in other words).

Anyway - a son was born, my father, the jazz fan, on 26th of July 1928. Harry was 25, Grandma was 28 years old. 

Love and peace - WNP

Get back, back to where you once belonged (Paul McCartney)

Get Back (Chapter 1, part 2)

Four generations of similar hands: William (WNP), Graham, Christina, Wozza,
Harry (Deedoo), Dulcie, Dusty. Socks and sandals were cool in the 60's! 

1956 was a stellar year for Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Dulcie and Graham Purdy.

For Elvis and John, it was the year of Heartbreak Hotel.  

Thousands of light years away in Auckland New Zealand lived my parents - blissfully unaware of that white heat moment of popular culture. They were swing fans, more interested in Sinatra Brubeck, Ellington and Count Basie.

At the same time that the 16 year old Lennon was being introduced to George Harrison in 1956 by Paul McCartney, Dulcie and Graham began thinking about starting a family, or more exactly Graham Nugent Purdy's pestering wore down Dulcie's resistance.

Graham was the only son of Harry Purdy and Christina Amelia Curson (in bizarre colour above). Harry was a master plasterer, having followed in the family tradition. He'd come to NZ as a young boy from Rochdale in Lancashire with his brother Edward (we called him Uncle Eddie) and his father - William Nugent Purdy - himself a skilled plasterer painter and paperhanger as his own father, James Purdy, had been.

The Purdy three settled in Auckland and eventually began setting up their Purdy and Sons plastering business. Testaments to their skill can be seen all over Auckland, or, at least, they used to be - sadly, many iconic Auckland buildings have been replaced by steel and glass. 

Harry, an insulin dependent diabetic was nonetheless a robust chunky man. His passions were manly man ones - hunting, deep sea fishing, boxing. He was like I imagine my other forbears were back in Rochdale.

Every one of Harry's uncles were working class - plasterers and labourers - and they all shared the distinct features of his great great grandfather, Joseph and his father, Jacob, who had moved down from Scotland to settle in Rochdale.

Me and Deedoo, Grandma with newbie, Ross. Sailor suits were cool in the late 1950's!

The Purdys have spockily consistent facial features; just look again at me and Deedoo.

Jacob Purdy was born in 1804. He supported his wife, Mary, and their nine children by doing gardening and labouring jobs around Rochdale. His second son, Joseph, born 1825, became a plasterer by trade and so set the trend for all male Purdys down through the 1800's and half of the 1900's. Graham Purdy broke the mould (ha).

William Nugent Purdy

Joseph and his wife, Ann Turner, also had a large family - ten children evenly split between girls and boys. Not to be outdone by all this procreation, one of his sons, James, born in 1855, had eleven children by his (poor) wife, Mary Ellen Hayes. 

One of the eleven was my great grandfather - William Nugent Purdy (1855-1962). He's a big deal because by coming to New Zealand he became the reason my parents could meet and make me. 

I exist and am a Kiwi because of him, so, bless you William.

Love and peace - WNP (same initials you'll notice) 

There's so much you have to go through (Cat Stevens)

September 21, 2009

Five years ago Graham Nugent Purdy passed away peacefully in the early hours. Five years??  I know I am incredulous every year but five years? Really?

Jade was around recently and had lots of questions one night about SWMBO's cousins. Although some of my cousins are part of the whanau, she also had questions about them too.

So I thought this post would include some archive material about Jade/Samantha/Adam/Keegan's great grandmother great grandfather (Deedoo), and grandmother - none of whom they ever met, as well as Graham Purdy natch.

I know I've used this photo before but all the Purdy players
and present. William, Graham, Christina, Wozza, Deedoo,
Dulcie Mary, and Ross.

Wozza, Deedoo, Grandma and Ross

Their passport photos for the trip to England to see Christine

Graham and his mum

Graham and his dad

Mum and dad with Ross and a photobomber

Graham and Dulcie - together again

Love and peace to you always - Warren

You know I love you so, baby please don't go (Lightnin' Hopkins)

You know I love our family heirloom.

As an heirloom it can be traced back, at the very least, to my great grandfather, William Nugent Purdy (notice how my initials and his are the same, I love that). Like his ancestors and his sons he was a master plasterer.

The heirloom is a concrete mixer and it still makes concrete like a dream.

It's been residing in Taupo for some years - it was used by Ross at his Mt Roskill house and in Taupo by dad before being stored at Ross' new Taupo place.

Many people have borrowed and used it over the years and it's gone through a number of parts and motors but it still makes the same unmistakable wonderful rumble.

Me and my grandad (aka
Deedoo)  in the back-
ground - I'm showing him
how it's done!

I must have cement/concrete/plaster in my veins. One of my early photos shows me working with Deedoo to build our first house (Korma Ave in Royal Oak) - I was 2. 

The family story goes that I would take my little wheelbarrow up to the mixer and say, "More kroncrete Deedoo".

When I was 15 I mixed the mortar for Deedoo who was helping with the brick work on our second home at Ramelton Road in Mt Roskill.

40 years later here I am mixing more concrete to provide solid footings for a tractor shed.

Man I love that concrete mixer!

Love and peace - Wozza

Within these walls, I can feel you (Lene Marlin)

There are two significant birthdays to celebrate in July and they are inextricably linked; my great grandfather, William Nugent Purdy (17 July 1880), and later it is the turn of my dad, Graham Nugent Purdy (26 July 1928).

William's history is complicated. I don't know anything of his early life but he eventually married Emma in Rochdale and they had three sons (one of whom died in infancy). Out of somewhere they made a crucial decision when my grandfather was very young (8 or 9) to move to New Zealand from Rochdale in the early 1900s. Basically -the farthest point away from Rochdale. The other end of the earth. Not like moving to Scunthorpe or something.

During the long passage to NZ via Australia, or else when they reached Australia, something happened to cause him to leave Emma, my great grandmother, in Sydney and come to NZ with his two very young sons.No one knows what really happened. I've heard various stories but the bottom line is that finding out the truth is no longer a viable prospect.

WNP, GNP, Christina, WNP, Deedoo, DMP, Ross
on the steps of Reimers Ave house.

 Like his own father William was a builder/ plasterer and he eventually started a business in Auckland - Purdy and Sons Plasterers. The business ended when my grandad retired (you'll recall that his only son - my dad - became a pharmacist and only an amateur plasterer).

My memories of my great grandfather are exclusively of him in his house in Reimers Ave, Mt Eden, Auckland until his death in the mid 1960s when I was 9 and Ross was 7. I don't have any memories of him coming to our house in Royal Oak or of his meeting us anywhere. The photographs of him holding me as a baby confirm that the minimal contact was always at his house.

It was a house he shared with his son Harry (my grandad) and his daughter-in-law, Christina. I'm not sure why he allowed them to move in with him. Whatever the reason he had us as frequent visitors. Every Saturday morning, mum and dad would load us into the family sedan and we would drive the short distance from Korma Ave to Mt Eden. That's every Saturday morning until...well... just every Saturday morning. When my grandmother died we still visited the house until my grandad moved to the Masonic village. Then we visited him there until his death.
  

From second from left: GNP, Harry, WNP. Photo taken
around July 26, 1949 (dad's 21st birthday party).

  

WNP, Grandma and Harry (Deedoo)

Our visits were very stylised. Ross and I would play on the entrance way pergola trying to avoid the roses, we would collect our magazines/ comics from grandma (mine were usually football magazines that had taken an age to travel from the UK but I looked forward to them never-the-less - not sure what Ross was given). We would play underneath the house amongst all the tools or on rare occasions we would visit the outside office (that needed a key so we would attach ourselves to dad for that visit) or play in the sheds at the back entrance that held all the plasterers' stuff - long wooden planks, drums of weird liquids and such. We would play inside in the study on an old typewriter or we would sit and listen and wait. Lotta waiting went on and I can see a version of myself with his head in a book or magazine.

During none of these times did we encounter William that I can recall. He had a room at the front of the house (remember it was his house) and he must have stayed in there, or else he was out but he was pretty old by this time so I doubt that - did he even have a car? Not sure, but we didn't come across him at all and we never went into his room. Never ever. Not once.

Ross will have far more vivid memories but to me he was always a shadowy figure, just on the edge of my childhood consciousness. I certainly knew he was there but we kept out of his way (or he lept out of ours, not sure which).

Our dad we called 'dad', our grandfather we called 'Deedoo' (I can't remember why but it suited him exactly), but our great grandfather had no pet name. We obviously didn't call him William or great grandfather; so we didn't call him anything! As I say he was a shadowy presence.

So I didn't ever get close to forming a relationship with him. Looking at other photos of him it is obvious that he did get out - bowls for instance and he was by all accounts a pretty social guy (you can tell that from his photos on this post) and my dad (and mum) got on well with him so it's all a bit strange really.

So a guy I never really knew. But...I feel a real bond to him. We share the same initials, we look similar (strong Purdy genes and that old Apples thing again) and we share overlapping history.

And I love him dearly for his legacy. Symbolically I wear his gold wedding band on my right hand ring finger. I am staring at it as I type. It's plain and beautiful and comes from a solid north of England, Rochdale origin. It permanently connects me to my ancestral roots. It makes me feel that a little bit of Rochdale is with me.

That's important to me because Rochdale feels like home in ways that I can't articulate. I had a very very strong sense of belonging when I visited for the first time in 2003.

So when the 17th spins into focus next week, spare a thought for the life of my great grandfather and maybe reflect a bit on your paternal great grandparents.

Love and peace - WNP